Tag: suicide attempt

Recovery…what does it mean?

by Midnight Demon, posted in Bipolar Disorder, blogging, chronic physical pain, depression, mood disorders, suicide, suicide attempt

Recovery…what does it mean?

I keep hearing people talk about recovery and I am at a loss. Can someone enlighten me on what the hell it is? And what exactly are you recovering from?

I hear from suicide attempt survivors all the time this word. Do people who think about suicide really recover after they attempt? Because I keep wanting to try again and again. I haven’t made an attempt in years but I think about suicide constantly. Or is recovery just something that happens after you learn different coping mechanisms?

The reason I do a lot of suicide research is because I want to find something to help me. If I never looked for it, I wouldn’t have found CAMS and the SSF so useful. I have also found other assessment tools but nothing else worked. Traditional therapy didn’t work for me. I had to find a therapist that treated me as an equal and collaborate with me on what works and what doesn’t. It’s still an ongoing process as my suicidality gets worse during certain times of the year than others.

I don’t think I will ever recover from my mental illness. I think it will wax and wane, just like my suicidality, but it will never get better. I might find symptom relief through medication but even with medication, my depressions get the better of me. They are too severe and too frequent to really get relief from them. Medication has been proven useless with treating them. I am just left to suffer through them until they pass.

Then I have the physical pain that I deal with. I don’t think I will ever recover from that. It just seems to get worse during the temps of New England. My former PCP thought that I can just do something to make me feel better and things would be better. Wishful thinking. As much as I don’t want to be on meds, I know it’s my new way of life. It’s the only way I can survive. Otherwise, I think I would entertain the thoughts of killing myself, and by entertain, I mean attempt.

Saturday Blog 39

by Midnight Demon, posted in Bipolar Disorder, blogging, cauda equina syndrome, chronic physical pain, depression, mood disorders, suicide

My sisters and I went out. It was a good time. We had plenty of Chinese food and brought most of it home. We just couldn’t finish it all. I came home and there was mail, mostly for me. Two good friends sent me Christmas tidings. My friend from Texas was very kind. She sent me a Hope coin. She wants me to hold on to it on my bad days. I am grateful to have her in my life. We always have good chats. She understands how dark my depressions are and doesn’t shy away from them. She wishes I don’t have them but she isn’t judgmental about it. She is a really good friend.

Even though I didn’t do too much of anything today, my thigh is hurting. I think if I sit too long, it aggravates it. So I try not to sit too long and walk around a little bit. I hate having this pain. It’s really driving me nuts. It’s making me more nervous about seeing the neurosurgeon on Tuesday. I just hope I am not wasting our time with this. The pain is not consistent and it doesn’t always come on when I sit too long, or at least when I think I have sat too long. It also has been brought on by walking home, after doing all that I did. I wish my fears would just go away but I have good reason to be fearful. Having a bad back is never an easy thing to not be afraid of. I just want an MRI to see if there are changes. I know that because I don’t have weakness or bowel/bladder problems there is probably nothing to worry about but I worry anyway.

I got an email from my favorite author. He finally described what a short story, novella, and novel were, in terms of word count. He will be coming out with a revised book about writing sometime in the next year. I will be getting this book because I love his writing style. He has been doing this for more than forty years so I think he knows something about writing.

My mother needed technical help with the TV as she was using one remote to shut the TV off and the other to shut off the cable box. Then was wondering why the TV wasn’t working. Going down and then back up the stairs really hurt my thigh. Seems anything to flex the muscles hurt. Dammit. I hope it calms down. I took a pain pill because my ankle is flaring. Hope it calms down both. I hate being in so much pain. I really want to end things tomorrow. But I promised my therapist I wouldn’t. It’s too bad I always keep my promises, but I never keep a promise to myself. Funny how that works.

My birthday is the day after the meeting with the surgeon. I am tempted to ask my therapist if I can stay with her overnight. I just am dreading this day so much. Why can’t I just stay 39? I just wish my family wouldn’t make a big deal out of it. It’s just another day.

Hot Chocolate and other Thoughts

by Midnight Demon, posted in Bipolar Disorder, blogging, chronic physical pain, depression, mood disorders, suicide, suicide attempt

Hot Chocolate and Other Thoughts

A blogger friend made a comment on my Dark Hot Chocolate post and I thought I would have a cup. I have been up since 0445. I plan on taking some nerve pain meds to get back to sleep. I want to finish my cup of cocoa first.

My mood is still down and I cannot seem to fix my TiVo. I am very, very sad about this. There are shows on there that I haven’t seen, like Rizzoli and Isles and definitely, Bones. Part of me doesn’t care and part of me is extremely pissed off that I didn’t watch the shows when I could have. I am going to play around with it sometime today to see if it will boot up.

I’m still having suicidal thoughts. My therapist called me after I sent her a distressing text. We talk for a bit and she made me promise that I wouldn’t do anything this weekend. She really wants to see me on my birthday. Now I have to get a Zipcar. My only worry is that I won’t be able to get one at a place that I know. I really want to get the same car I got last time. It drove really well. I think next time I am going to take the highway home rather than go through the back roads. It seemed to take forever to get home through the back roads and I was getting really aggravated because I wanted to go home. It depends on how I feel. I was going to take the other highway home but there was traffic due to construction and I didn’t want to sit in traffic. There was no traffic on the back roads but I was just impatient to get home.

My suicidal plans are put off, again. I am not sure how I feel about this. I feel discouraged and angry. I shouldn’t have told my therapist about this. I don’t know why I seem to do things like this. I just feel so hopeless about every thing that is going on in my life. I can’t seem to do a damn thing. The only thing I can do is watch my niece when my sister needs me to, though I can no longer pick her up from school. The distance is just too much for me. There are too many hills for me to climb. It saddens me because I was once able to do those hills without a problem. And it kills me that I am disabled. I fucking hate being disabled where I can no longer do the things I was did. I can’t walk, which was my major stress reliever. I had my game, which was also my stress reliever but it shut down and I haven’t been able to find something similar. I could play Farmville but there is no challenge to that. You just plant your crops and collect “money” when you harvest then plant your crops again. It’s lost its appeal. I just have no other activities to keep me occupied so I think about suicide most of the time.

The reason I think about suicide is not only because I am disgruntled that I am disabled, but also because I don’t have anything else to occupy my time. Sure I go out to Starbucks and have my drink and write in my journal. But then I get anxious and need to come home. I only stay for about an hour, sometimes less. And then my mother calls me to see what I am doing. She also calls to let me know what we are having for supper. I try to have enough funds to last me through the month but sometimes it doesn’t work out that way. This month I bought coffee so my funds were lower than they should be. I meant to add more funds to the Starbucks card but I never did. So now I have the entire weekend to ponder about my upcoming appointment with my neurosurgeon.

Saturday, I am going out with my sisters for Chinese food. It’s my birthday celebration with them. I wanted to go to another place but I have been deprived of Lo Mein for a while and I want it dammit! I also want General Gao. So I already know what I want. That will be a distraction for a little while. I am sure I will continue to write my Saturday Blogs. I know I have been writing more blogs. It helps to write my thoughts down.

Reasons for Living vs. Reasons for Dying

by Midnight Demon, posted in Bipolar Disorder, blogging, cauda equina syndrome, chronic physical pain, depression, mood disorders, psychache, suicide, suicide attempt

Reasons for Living vs Reasons for Dying

This title is the name of an article written by David Jobes. It has to do with suicidality. The idea is to list your reasons for living and then your reasons for dying. The hope is that the reasons for living outweigh the reasons for dying.

I have been struggling a lot lately with my suicidality. Last week I wanted to do something very badly. I didn’t care what it was, as long as the end result was death. I texted my therapist and after I met my ungrateful father, she called me. We talked about my plan that was running around my head and the stressors that was leading me to think of suicide. It was a short phone call so we didn’t get into real specifics. I am sure that if we had time for a session, she would have asked what my reasons for living/dying were. It’s her way of gauging just how suicidal I am. Usually if I don’t have any reasons for living, my constriction is pretty high. Constriction is the narrowing of the senses. In this case, I only see suicide as a way out and I am damned to achieve it one way or another. I have been stressed over my birthday, not to mention Christmas and still trying to save money for the new year because I know I will have to pay for my prescriptions again. I also need to save some money so I can see my therapist sometime in the new year. But that is all future planning and it is stressing me out to no end. I don’t want to live to see my birthday in the 9 days. I was planning on ending things this Saturday so I made plans with my sisters for a birthday dinner with just the three of us. I still have Sunday to worry about. And the fact that what I have in mind, I have plenty of is not helping my case. I have three bottles of meds that I could use to try and end my life. But the problem is where I will do this. I can’t do it at home because I don’t want to be found by family members. And I know it will be traumatic to anyone that finds me, but I don’t care. I can’t stand living this hell that is supposedly called life. I am in so much pain lately that I can’t think. The new pain meds have me so sedated it’s not funny. And I think it’s messing up my bowels, too. Instead of being constipated, I am now having loose stools. That might be good for a “normal” person but not good with someone like me who has impaired function of their bowel due to cauda equina syndrome.

I made an appointment with my neurosurgeon the day before my birthday. It is going to be a wasted visit because there are no new images of my back. The latest scan was in 2007. So it’s just talking to him to update him on what is going on and then he will most likely order an MRI. I will then have to have another appointment to discuss the results. I am scared that I will have to have surgery again. I have no idea what that will mean. Or he might decide to pass me off to another neurosurgeon because he is a pedi doc and not an adult doc. I don’t know. I will be pissed off it I am again passed the buck to someone else.

I am also worried that I am not going to get the level of care from the new PCP in my doc’s office when he leaves and my days on opioids might be coming to an end. That is what is really freaking me out. I can’t manage my pain without these meds. It keeps me sane. But some doctors wrote an article in a prominent medical journal about how chronic pain patients get lumped with substance abuse disorders and other mental health issues and therefore “abuse” the meds they receive. Which is utter nonsense. I have never abused nor taken more than prescribed. I take what I need on a given day. Sure there might be some days that I need more medicine than others but that is rare. When I have a pain flare up, it might mean 6 pills instead of 4. Or if I am not in too much pain, it might mean just 2 pills a day. It varies because my pain is not constant all the time. It’s always a three on a scale of 1-10 at any given point but any activity (going up and down stairs, walking for lengths of time, standing for lengths of time, etc.) will increase my pain at night. At night is when my pain is at its worse. That is when my reasons for living go out the fucking window and my reasons for dying increase trifold. This is what it’s like living with chronic pain.

My therapist knows this. She has seen the worst of my suicidality to know when to intervene and when to let me vent. She tries hard to let me work it out on my own as I usually do. She guides me through these rough passages. But I don’t know if this time she has what it takes to see me through these waters. I am so drowning and I just feel like no one is hearing me scream in a crowded room. I am just so sad that my doctor is leaving, my psychiatrist is not available at the moment, and I have to face a neurosurgeon the day before I really don’t want to be alive.